Let's go ahead and see what we have to do. Use <code>nano -w <name_of_file></code> to edit files -- the "<code>-w</code>" disables word-wrapping, which is handy when editing configuration files. You can copy and paste from the examples.

{{fancywarning|It's important to edit your <code>/etc/fstab</code> file before you reboot! You will need to modify both the "fs" and "type" columns to match the settings for your partitions and filesystems that you created with <code>gdisk</code> or <code>fdisk</code>. Skipping this step may prevent Funtoo Linux from booting successfully.}}

/etc/fstab

/etc/fstab is used by the mount command which is ran when your system boots. Statements of this file inform mount about partitions to be mounted and how they are mounted. In order for the system to boot properly, you must edit /etc/fstab and ensure that it reflects the partition configuration you used earlier:

Currently, our default /etc/fstab has the root filesystem as /dev/sda4 and the swap partition as /dev/sda3. These will need to be changed to /dev/sda3 and /dev/sda2, respectively.

Note

If you're using UEFI to boot, change the /dev/sda1 line so it says vfat instead of ext2. Similarly, make sure that the /dev/sda3 line specifies either xfs or ext4, depending on which filesystem you chose at filesystem-creation time.

/etc/localtime

/etc/localtime is used to specify the timezone that your machine is in, and defaults to UTC. If you would like your Funtoo Linux system to use local time, you should replace /etc/localtime with a symbolic link to the timezone that you wish to use.

(chroot) # ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/MST7MDT /etc/localtime

The above sets the timezone to Mountain Standard Time (with daylight savings). Type ls /usr/share/zoneinfo to see what timezones are available. There are also sub-directories containing timezones described by location.

/etc/make.conf

MAKEOPTS can be used to define how many parallel compilations should occur when you compile a package, which can speed up compilation significantly. A rule of thumb is the number of CPUs (or CPU threads) in your system plus one. If for example you have a dual core processor without hyper-threading, then you would set MAKEOPTS to 3:

MAKEOPTS="-j3"

If you are unsure about how many processors/threads you have then use nproc to help you.

(chroot) # nproc
16

Set MAKEOPTS to this number plus one:

MAKEOPTS="-j17"

USE flags define what functionality is enabled when packages are built. It is not recommended to add a lot of them during installation; you should wait until you have a working, bootable system before changing your USE flags. A USE flag prefixed with a minus ("-") sign tells Portage not to use the flag when compiling. A Funtoo guide to USE flags will be available in the future. For now, you can find out more information about USE flags in the Gentoo Handbook.

LINGUAS tells Portage which local language to compile the system and applications in (those who use LINGUAS variable like OpenOffice). It is not usually necessary to set this if you use English. If you want another language such as French (fr) or German (de), set LINGUAS appropriately:

LINGUAS="fr"

/etc/conf.d/hwclock

If you dual-boot with Windows, you'll need to edit this file and change the value of clock from UTC to local, because Windows will set your hardware clock to local time every time you boot Windows. Otherwise you normally wouldn't need to edit this file.

(chroot) # nano -w /etc/conf.d/hwclock

Localization

By default, Funtoo Linux is configured with Unicode (UTF-8) enabled, and for the US English locale and keyboard. If you would like to configure your system to use a non-English locale or keyboard, see Funtoo Linux Localization.